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The Reward of Work is Harder Work

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If you stop, you starve// and they just offer what you do/ to others, starved already,/ and schooled, as you, in servitude.

The Fuddy-Duddy Writer Reflects on her Fan(s)

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The Fuddy-Duddy Writer does not do wit.

Scottish Independence

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with peaty aromatics, opened,/ and a welcomed sting, swallowed,

blind

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what world is this?

Writer's Envy

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You may think you've tasted envy, but yours was just a sour sip of wine at a civilized wine-tasting. Mine is bottom-shelf, well-brand gin in a biker bar with miss-the-urinal piss stains on the floor.

Sure Thing

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If you ask me I'm thinking I'm just blowing off some steam, some hot air that doesn't add up to the old cliche of a hill of beans. A hill of fucking beans.

Exhale

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It's as if the house knew I was relinquishing my hold on it.

Sunbelt Winter Sketches

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Sunlight and the small wind/ swallow the frost/ on rooftops and windshields

My Date with Edgar Allen Poe

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Now, if someone is tellin' you that she had a date with Edgar Allen Poe, you might be tempted to say, "Hey, sister, what kind of drugs you be doin' for the last two days?" But I swear on my Aunt Boo's chastity belt that's what went down and with my…

Staying With Mattie

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I invited Henry to go out with me and Marge, suggesting he ask Ellen who he dated a while back and who still asked about him, but Henry shook his head “no” and said “out things” were just too boring at our ages — and besides, since his…

Paradise Island

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A man comes out of the waves

Blank Checks

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Then he said something that really made sense, said he kept a blank check in his back pocket...

After getting sober through a bout of Bukowski

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.

A Lesson

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She’s the worst student in my Modern Film class and we’re alone at a bar.

What Noah Joad Was Thinking When They Left Him Behind

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Going to catch Ma a fish. Won't be special like Tom coming home. But she won't have to feed it. She can eat it.

Phoenix Complaining

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I seem to be at a crisis in this cursed writing life of mine[exclamation point] I am too depressed to squeeze another uncannily inspiring observation out of my pert[comma] sassy self[semi-colon] I waiver hysterically between feverish confidence and a pai

nudes

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for a handful of weeks/ my father took me to/ the college of art and design/ downtown/ where i took drawing lessons./

what are our motives

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Do you think that’s a good idea, you said. Sure, I said, as the men coiled up the anaconda and put it in a second truck that had arrived. You don’t think anyone will wonder what our motives are?

Feb 8

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Call it a spell or a prayer or a ritual; it worked.

Misplaced Emotions

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I spent most of those days in my car. Stashed in the trunk was a cache of precious stones, neatly sorted and separated, bound in smooth black velvet inside a smooth black briefcase.

Slut Whore

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Slut Whore has every Barbie on the market lined up sitting on the windowsill along her bedroom wall, and all their best clothes and accessories.

I’m tired of being timid.

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“Later,” I say to the frisky crickets, verbal cash of the eggnog spa, spot of gum…

Boats for Rent (Thinking About You)

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We're killing off the elephants. We're killing off the tigers. We're killing off monarch butterflies. We're wrecking the coral reefs. Big sad gorillas don't feel at home in their own homes. And all instead of learning to live in some…

Prosaic Miscellany

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Some days, you want all the red states to secede

After coming back from nowhere,

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you notice some of what you need― a pressure of something you've intended, somewhere without a place,

the girl who was my suicide

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last night a girl came to me in the shape of my suicide.

Bad Boys

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You the macho man shuffling one woman out the back entrance to let another one in the front.

Life After Death

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If opposites attract, that might explain it, Doreen and I. Conjugally blissed through thick and thin. Forty some odd years. Since June of sixty five.

What a Monster I Would Have Become Had I Gone Through Life Unimpeded

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the title of this poem

A Lovely Ghost Sings a Haunting Thing at Her Own Reflection

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We've come this far. That's all we know. We've watched others reach their abrupt ends. They've given us this exact moment and we've taken it from them, sometimes without thinking. It's time for the next communication. I know what concern is…